Hypnotherapy: The new approach to kicking smoking for good

By Susan Hepburn, an accredited hypnotherapist and psychotherapist, with over 30 years’ experience treating clients with a range of addictions and best-selling author of several books including No 1 best seller, ‘Stop Smoking in One Hour’. Her main clinic is in London’s Harley Street and she has clinics in LA, New York and Italy.

Known for her celebrity clientele including award winning singers like Adele, tv chef Nigella Lawson and the England Football team, Susan treats all sorts of people from all walks of life. Her unique and effective programmes can dramatically change deep ingrained behaviours and transform lives - particularly in helping smokers quit the habit with no withdrawal symptoms or cravings, no irritability or desire for unhealthy replacements, no matter how many years they have smoked or how many a day.

The turn of the New Year is a time of reflection where many assess the highlights of the past year and consider the aspects of their lives that they’d like to change.

New Year’s resolutions are a big driver behind enacting personal change, with a third of the UK’s 10 million smokers attempting to kick the habit for good each year.

However, quitting smoking is usually a difficult task mentally and emotionally, as it requires changing learned behaviour. It can also be an intense physical ordeal for your body to overcome and requires far more than just will power.

As a result, only 4-7% of people who attempt to quit smoking by going cold turkey are successful, and the average smoker will attempt to quit between six and eleven times before they succeed.

It’s therefore time to re-think how we approach smoking cessation.

Changing your routine and making non-smoking friends are certainly useful techniques, as are switching to patches and keeping your hands and mouth busy. Yet none of these get to the core of your addiction or will reverse your habit. As a result, each time you try to quit, cravings take over and you only end up wanting a cigarette more, and temptation always comes out on top.

This is where hypnotherapy has the answer.

Hypnosis evokes a state of deep relaxation within your body and increased awareness within your mind, which helps to focus attention and heighten awareness and suggestibility.

As a result, hypnotherapy is one of the most powerful tools for personal development and positive change as it can access your true creative potential. It also works to short-circuit – or delete – negative patterns of thought or behaviour. You have all the skills you need to get over addiction or bad habits in your mind: it's all about tapping into that 'I can change myself' mentality. Hypnotherapists are there to help release your power to control and change your habits.

By helping you to reach into your past and delete subconscious memories, hypnosis will work to erase the emotional complexities that cause you to turn to smoking, completely overhauling your behaviour and treating your addiction at the core of the issue.

Smoking is one habit than can be deleted instantly within one session. By working to remove the feelings that you associate with smoking, hypnosis helps you to find that delete button and to reset your habits and behaviours. It is easy and successful.

All too often with smoking comes feelings of guilt, anxiety and stress, which in fact whilst triggered by the addiction itself, can become an obstacle to seeking help. This is because it requires individuals to admit that there is a problem first, heightening these negative emotions.

Therefore, hypnotherapy can help individuals to build lasting, healthy and sustainable control over their behaviour, kicking their smoking addiction for good, whilst re-building patterns of behaviour that are completely free of guilt and dependence.

Ultimately, no one is born pre-destined to become addicted to smoking, it is a habit they adopt and so quitting for good all centres around changing this learned behaviour.

Irrespective of whether you have been smoking for two years or twenty years or smoking five per day or 80 there are no exceptions to being able to quit. There would have been a time in your life when you were not addicted to smoking, a time when there was no anxiety, guilt or stress surrounding the habit. Hypnosis can help you to find your way back to this path and move forward with a new way of life.

With hypnotherapy you will not experience any of the withdrawal symptoms normally associated with quitting smoking. These will all be dealt with in the session, as well as removing any dependence on smoking paraphernalia such as patches and vapes.

By freeing your dependence on smoking you will no longer be thinking about when your next nicotine hit is coming, introducing a new min set that will stay with you forever.

Smoking addiction is a poignant issue for Susan as she lost her mother (aged 54) to a smoking-related disease and is dedicated to helping as many people as possible quit smoking.

She is on a mission to make major lasting benefits to the lives of those she works with and tackle societal issues – whether on a one-to-one basis or during her seminars or group sessions.